About The Interaction Design Foundation

We are a movement to create accessible and
affordable Ivy League-level design education

About The Interaction Design Foundation

We are an independent non-profit initiative with an objective that sounds like a paradox: that of
increasing
the level of global design
education to an Ivy League standard, while at the same time reducing costs to as low as possible. We
democratise learning by providing
top-notch curricular materials, and aim to strike the perfect balance between academic rigor and
practical
relevance.

Established in 2002 in Denmark, we are inspired by the Scandinavian educational system to create
low-cost,
high-quality education to
change the way people learn design. Over the past decade, we have built a sustainable collaboration and
education platform, and have grown
our global community to reach 475 local groups in 84 countries.

We continue to collaborate with top universities and companies, such as Stanford, Cambridge and SAP
Labs, as
well as such noted authors
as Clayton Christensen and Don Norman, to share our knowledge with over a million designers every month.

Development of Leadership Skills

IDF members get opportunities to train in various leadership roles. Depending on their preference and
abilities, they may guide junior
designers, manage projects, volunteer to head a local community, or play a global role at IDF. For those
who need elaborate coaching skills in
their work, we provide a comprehensive training course on coaching in the design profession, along with
the opportunity to practice by
coaching members of the IDF Design League.

The IDF's certification process involves a carefully balanced mix of subjective and objective assessment
factors. The final recognition of their
level of UX proficiency is awarded following a thorough assessment of the candidate's competencies by
his/her course instructors, personal
coach, and the IDF Certification Board.

Contribution to the Profession

Proven experts in the field of UX can contribute to the quality of education and professional services
by developing training materials and
textbooks, or by serving on the IDF Certification Board. We also offer outstanding
publishing opportunities with an immediate reach to our
million-strong target audience.

Hiring and Developing Personnel

We help companies, from the smallest to the largest such as SAP and Accenture, to build great customer
experiences in the most certain way.
The IDF Company Membership enables company managers to:

Access the world's largest community of UX designers

Build UX design and research expertise in their companies by taking instructor-led courses at home
or at work - these are completely
self-paced to accommodate for busy schedules

Solve actual business problems by getting help from the IDF's worldwide network of design
professionals and coaches

Use industry-leading designers as personal coaches to help their employees tackle the trickiest
business challenges and professional
development challenges

Administer individual memberships and corporate accounts with no hassle or unforeseen expenses

Share The Knowledge Tour

We are so committed to our mission statement of sharing what great design can do for humankind as well
as our mission to lower the cost of
education globally that we started a 30,000 mile bike tour. We partnered with SAP/SAP University
Alliances and Max Peer, our intrepid biker, to
take on the daunting task of pedalling the whole way around the globe, one mile at a time. Armed with
lots of tracking equipment to track his
progress around the world - and even a full-size foldable canoe on a trailer so he could cross waterways
- Max went on his journey to Share
the Knowledge.

Each week, Max made media stops at local universities and tech companies where he could meet the local
press. These tour stops made
headlines and Max was often met with pep rallies at universities and even a police escort of three cars
at Notre Dame University. Here is an
example
media coverage from Forbes Magazine
- including a statement from the Danish Minister for Trade and Investment.

A picture from the photo-shoot in Florida where the IDF Share The Knowledge Tour was
kicked
off.

Max Peer and the IDF are biking around the world - 35,000 miles - visiting colleges and
universities
along the way in an effort to promote access to education materials for students around
the
world.
Peer's bike, with him on it, weighs 420 lbs.

Another picture from the Florida kick-off event with IDF Founders Mads Soegaard and
Rikke
Friis
Dam,
along with the global head of SAP University Alliances and of course Max, the IDF biker
and
representative.

Max carries a full-size foldable canoe on this bike trailer so that he can cross
waterways.
He
can
fit all his equipment e.g. bike, tent, food, cooking equipment, etc into the canoe
as
shown
on
this picture.

Photo from the pre-conference of the IDF Share The Knowledge Tour and subsequent
kick-off
event
in
Florida

At many of the tour stops, we received an especially warm welcome with student pep
rallies
and
even
a police escort. This picture is from Michigan University.

Max and the IDF bike photographed at Georgia Southern University.

Share The Knowledge Tour arrives in Washington D.C. in the hope of persuading
politicians to
help
our mission of lowering the cost of education.

A picture from the Florida stop - a joint event with SAP University Alliances

Max Peer stops at the University of Notre Dame during his bicycle trip around the world

Another photoshoot at a university

At many tour stops, the IDF PR team had notified local media and bike clubs of Max
arrival.
As a result, in several cities across the US, Max was met by local bike clubs in the
outskirts of
a city and then escorted to the Share The Knowledge event at the local university or
tech
company.

Max was interviewed for a radio show on what great design can do for humankind and how
the
Interaction Design Foundation is working to lower the cost of education.

Max in front of Mount Rushmore on his way across the US

At many tour stops, the IDF PR team had notified local media and bike clubs of Max
arrival.
As
a
result, in several cities across the US, Max was met by local bike clubs in the
outskirts of
a
city
and then escorted to the Share The Knowledge event at the local university or tech
company.

Max at the Canada-US border. Share the Knowledge Tour did the full round-trip of North
America
and
of course also made several media stops in Canada.

Max and the IDF Share The Knowledge Tour was greeted outsite the ATT University

Max and the IDF Share The Knowledge Tour reaches Niagara Falls.

Max in conversation after one of his presentations at a University or tech company.

Max shaking hands with the President of SAP in North America at SAP Headquarters in
Newton
Square.

Max crossing one of the many waterways. He uses his foldable canoe which allows him to
carry
all
his
equipment including his bike and bike trailer

In the classroom holding a presentation about how the IDF is trying to lower the cost of
education
and what great design can do for humankind.

At SAP North America headquarters where Max was greeted by employees and the president
of
SAP
North
America

The People Behind

The Executive Board

The Executive Board oversees and guides the overall direction of the Foundation. The composition of
the board reflects our mission of serving both industry and academia.

Don Norman

La Jolla, California, United States

Don Norman is the author of numerous books including "Emotional Design," and more recently, "Living with Complexity." He is co-founder of the Nielsen Norman group, a professor at KAIST (in Korea), and IDEO fellow, and a design theorist, studying the fundamentals of modern design.Donald A. Norman has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from MIT and a Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. He also holds a honorary degree from the University of Padua, Italy. He has been a professor of Computer Science (at Northwestern University), Psychology and Cognitive Science (at University of California, San Diego). He has also worked for Apple Computer at Apple's Advanced Technology Group and for Hewlett-Packard. He now collaborates with Jakob Nielsen and Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini in the Nielsen Norman Group Recently Norman received the the 2006 recipient of the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science.

Bill Buxton is an interaction designer and researcher. He is Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and prior to that, he was Principal of his own Toronto-based boutique design and consulting firm, Buxton Design.
Bill is one of the pioneers in computer music, and has played an important role in the development of computer-based tools for film, industrial design, graphics and animation.As a researcher, he has had a long history with Xerox' Palo Alto Research Center and the University of Toronto (where he is still an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, and Visiting Professor at the Knowledge Media Design Institute). During the fall of 2004, he was a lecturer in the Department of Industrial Design at the Ontario College of Art and Design, and during the Spring of 2005, he was a Visiting Scientist at Microsoft Research, Cambridge.
From 1994 until December 2002, he was Chief Scientist of Alias|Wavefront, and from 1995, its parent company SGI Inc. In 2001, the Hollywood Reporter named him one of the 10 most influential innovators in Hollywood. In 2002 Time Magazine named him one of the top 5 designers in Canada, and he was elected to the ACM's CHI Academy.

Daniel Rosenberg is a global UX executive with the full range of skills in interaction design, usability metrics, game design and design management. He has dozens of publications in the field and is a frequently requested speaker at UX conferences and consultant.
During his period as UI Architect for Borland he invented many of the the design patterns still popular in contemporary GUI design. These include the design of the modern programming IDE and the use of "tabs" as an organizing principle for object oriented properties.
Books he has contributed to the UX field include the text book "Human Factors in Product Design" (Elsevier 1991) as well as chapters in the "Handbook of Human Computer Interaction" (Elsevier 1988), "Coordinating User Interfaces for Consistency" (Academic Press 1989) and "Usability in Practice" (Academic Press 1994). He was a founding editor of ACM's NetWorker magazine and is an active member of the interaction-design.org advisory board.
Specialties
Global User Experience, Design Management, User Interface Design, Usability Measurement, Design Thinking & UX Strategy Consulting

Irene is the former head of UX and Design at Google. Currently, she is an operating partner at Khosla Ventures, where she works with portfolio companies to make their design great. She is dedicated to raising the strategic value of design and user research through better methods, practices, processes, leadership and quality. Irene does this by building high performing teams, establishing design practices, mentoring and growing the next generation of great designers and directing the design of interfaces and experiences. She drives strategic discussions at the highest levels of companies, focusing first on user needs to inspire product innovation.A lifelong gadget girl and math and science geek, Irene built robots in college and went to graduate school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to pursue studies in electrical and computer engineering. There, she found herself surrounded by young men who built technology for the sake of technology; however, Irene’s passion was to build technology inspired by people’s needs directed at solving real problems, so she carved her own path. Through coursework in engineering psychology and human factors, computer science and industrial engineering, she created her own program of study in human-computer interaction (HCI) during a time when studying HCI was unheard of. Irene then went on to be among the first designers with such a background in the consumer Internet space and began her career as an interaction designer at Netscape Communications.After Netscape, Irene joined Yahoo! in 1998, where she established Yahoo’s user experience design practice and led the team for eight years. In 2006, Irene joined Google and led the user experience team there for six years, where she was responsible for design and research for all Google-branded products worldwide. Following Google and prior to joining Khosla Ventures, Irene ran product design at Udacity.Irene also teaches yoga and meditation at Avalon Art and Yoga Center, one of Palo Alto’s oldest and most established yoga studios. She co-chairs the board of trustees at Bowman International School, a K-8 private Montessori school in Palo Alto, Calif.Irene holds a bachelor’s of science degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of South Carolina Honors College summa cum laude and a master’s of science degree in industrial engineering and human-computer interaction from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Ken Friedman is Research Professor and until recently the Dean of the Faculty of Design at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. He works at the intersection of three fields: design, management, and art. Friedman works with theory construction and research methodology for design. He also works with design process and design thinking as tools for value creation and economic innovation. In 1990, he created the first course in strategic design in Europe for the Oslo Business School, one of the first such courses in the world. From 1994 to 2009, he was Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design at the Norwegian School of Management, focusing on knowledge economy issues, culture, and leadership. From 2003 to 2009, he held a research appointment at The Danish Design School and the Danish Design Research Center in Copenhagen.
Ken Friedman has done research in philosophy of design, doctoral education in design, knowledge management, and philosophy of science. He worked with national design policy in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Wales, and state design policy in Victoria, Australia. He is active in developing international research networks and conferences for the design research community. He is an editor of the journals Artifact and the Journal of Design Research, and a member of the editorial board of such journals as Design Studies, Design and Culture, and the International Journal of Design. He is a Council Member of the Design Research Society and the Australian Deans of the Built Environment and Design, and has been an officer in both groups. He co-chaired the La Clusaz Conference on Doctoral Education in Design in 2000, the European Academy of Management Conference in 2006, the Design Research Society Conference in 2006, the Cumulus International Conference in 2009, and the Hong Kong Conference on Doctoral Education in Design in 2011, as well as chairing the Victoria Conference on Design Thinking in 2009.
Ken Friedman is also a practicing artist and designer active in the international laboratory known as Fluxus. He had his first solo exhibition in New York in 1966. His work is represented in major museums and galleries around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, and Stadtsgalerie Stuttgart. The University of Iowa Alternative Traditions in the Contemporary Arts is the official repository of Friedman's papers and research notes. The Silverman Fluxus Collection at the Museum of Modern Art, Archiv Sohm at Stadtsgalerie Stuttgart and the Mandeville Department of Special Collections at the University of California also hold extensive archives on Friedman's work of the 1960s and 1970s.

Jonas Löwgren is an interaction designer, researcher and teacher. Currently employed as professor of interaction and information design at Linköping University, Sweden. Main areas of expertise include collaborative media, interactive visualization and the design theory of digital materials.

Olof Schybergson is co-founder and CEO of Fjord. Since founding the company in 2001, Olof has led Fjord to become one of the world's most successful global service design consultancies working with top clients including BBC, Citibank, ESPN, Flickr, Foursquare, Nokia, and Qualcomm, among others. Olof has years of experience collaborating with major brands across the United States and Europe to design breakthrough experiences that make complex systems simple and elegant.

United States

Vietnam

Our Mission Statement

We produce top-grade open source educational materials by the world's design elite.
Through free and open access to top-grade educational materials on how to design technology,
we educate millions of technology designers on how to make more
people-oriented and easy-to-use technology - like websites,
household appliances, software applications, and mobile devices.

We advocate great design through our social media reach of
2 million people every month as well as
initiatives like our 30,000 mile bike tour with
weekly stops, university pep rallies, and a great media coverage.
For us, advocating great design is a battle against frustrating, time-consuming,
and poorly designed technology that drains our productivity, dignity, and sometimes our sanity.
Better design of technology will improve everyone's quality of life.

We facilitate Local Groups of learning and career advancement. With
377 Local Groups in 82 countries, we
enable designers to meet up, learn, discuss and become inspired. Our Local Groups is a great place
to
meet your future employer, employee, client or friend.

Through our paid services, like online instructor-led courses, we help lower the
cost
of design education globally. We help other designers hone
their skills through education, network, and career development. We believe that
design education - of Ivy League quality - should be financially accessible to
everyone
so we continually expand our curriculum, maintain low membership costs and thus strongly live after
the
UNESCO statement, "Universal access to high quality education is key to the building of peace,
sustainable
social and economic development, and
intercultural dialogue."

Through our corporate training programs
we help corporates take advantage of great design - both to the benefit of their
customers as well as their revenue.
"Businesses run better on better designed technology", as we say. Just
take a quick look at Apple's stock performance for some
living proof of the business impact of great design.

We foster synergy between academia and high-tech companies. We mix top professors
from
Stanford, MIT, Cambridge, etc. with elite industry designers from Google Research,
Apple, IBM Research, etc. And together we produce top-grade and open source learning materials to
the
benefit of both industry and academia all over the world.

We provide aid for educational institutions and companies in developing countries
by giving them free access to materials that otherwise would
be out of their financial reach. 20 % of our readers are from developing countries,
and the number is increasing exponentially.
Education is the single most powerful way to lift people out of poverty.

We modernize the publishing industry by building a conceptual, legal, editorial,
and
technical platform for the publication of first-rate online
material in a world where 1) people prefer free content over paid content for reasons of both time
and
money 2) the physical book is being
outmanoeuvred by the e-book 3) authors prefer that publishers use technology to maximize readership
and
not use it to limit readership as in the
case of paywalls.

IDF Media Resources

You can download an IDF Media Resource pack here, which contains the IDF Identity Manual (IDF Logo
applications, as well as color scheme), other useful supporting materials, and instructions on setting up
Facebook or LinkedIn groups for IDF Local Group Leaders.

IDF LOGO APPLICATIONS

Logotype

Please use whenever possible

Symbol

For use when you have limited space

White Logotype

For use on darker backgrounds

White Symbol

For use on darker backgrounds with limited space

SUPPORTING MATERIALS FOR LOCAL LEADERS

IDF in the News

Forbes

July, 26, 2013

"Education is the single most powerful way to lift people out of poverty and change
lives. Our
vision is to create a sustainable model for equal opportunities to education and to
improve the
design of technology. It is our vision to give everybody absolutely free access to
educational
materials in the highest quality possible - whether they live in New York or New Delhi,"

Mad Max's Bike Adventures: Founded by husband and wife team Mads Soegaard and Rikke
Friis Dam,
IDF is an organization that seeks to share knowledge at an affordable price worldwide.
At
SAPPHIRE NOW to promote their sponsorship with SAP and SAP University Alliances, the
Danish duo
had a textbook on display written by two SAP employees. IDF's textbooks and video
materials, on
topics ranging from Information Architecture to Wearable Technology, written by and
recorded
with the elite of the tech world, are offered free of charge through their website. They
believe
that education should be available to people all over the world, regardless of their
means or
income or access to learning facilities.

Austrian-born rider Max Peer brought what's being billed as the Share the KnowledgeTour
to CMU
and met with students who are part of the university's SAP University Alliance. SAP is
enterprise software used by many large organizations to manage business operations and
customer
relations.

"It is our mission to improve user experience and create more equal access to education
-
nothing less," said Rikke Friis Dam, co-founder of the Interaction Design Foundation, a
co-sponsor of the tour. "We need a more sustainable world and that is achievable through
education. Education is the single most powerful way to lift people out of poverty and
change
lives."

Contact Information

If you have anything to tell us, we'd love to
hear from you! You can drop us an email
to reach us, and we'll reply as quickly as
we can! If you think your question is
frequently-asked, you can check out our
FAQs.

Below is a step-by-step guide on how to add your certificate to your LinkedIn profile:

First, download your certificates to your computer

Go to your LinkedIn profile page and scroll to your "Summary section

Click "Photo", then select “Upload a file” and select your membership certificate in the dialogue box:

Enter a few lines of descriptive text about your membership of the Interaction Design Foundation and click "Save"

It is as simple as that. Now, anyone who visits your profile can see you are a member of the Interaction Design Foundation.

Can I take all your courses at no extra costs?

That's correct. Once you have paid your membership, you can take any number of our instructor-led courses that you would like. At no additional costs. No hidden fees. Just pure learning and networking.

We’re a community and not a money machine. And yeah, we hate hidden fees just as much as you do!

Yes, you can take all the courses you would like. For example, if there are 30 active courses, you can enrol on all 30 course at the same time and move from one to the other as you please.

There are no further charges after you paid for your membership.

Please note: If you have a student membership, you can take a maximum of three courses at the same time. As a student, you can thus still take all the courses you would like – free of extra charges – just as long as you finish them (or drop them) so that you don’t have more than three ongoing courses at the same time.

What is the difference between a Professional and a Student membership?

The student membership includes the very same benefits as a Professional membership - except for 2 things:

You will appear as a "student" to the other IDF members. In other words, if you want to use your membership to network and get a job, then you should probably go for the professional membership.

You can take a maximum of three courses at the same time. You can still take all the courses you would like free of extra charges – just as long as you finish them (or drop them) so that you don’t have more than three ongoing courses at the same time.

Can I pay the membership fee monthly?

That depends on the membership type.

You can not pay for the Professional Membership or the Student Membership in monthly instalments, as much as we’d like to help you. Please bear in mind that just one of our courses would cost you over 1000 USD if you were to buy it online elsewhere. So, right there, you are literally saving thousands and thousands of dollars.

You can, however, pay for IDF Design League membership in monthly instalments. The reason is that this membership is more costly than the Professional and Student membership.

That's also the reason we list all our membership fees in monthly rates so that you can compare the cost between membership types – even though two of the membership types are paid yearly.

Which Credit or Debit card can I use to pay?

We accept Visa, MasterCard and American Express cards - bothdebit cards and credit cards.
In addition, you should be able to use your debit and credit card to pay the membership fee using PayPal checkout (even without having a PayPal account).

Is your card getting declined?

Possible reasons

IDF is registered in Denmark and that could make the transaction appear as an "overseas charge". That could cause your bank's security system to block the transaction.

Your account lacks funds.

Temporary technical problem between your bank and the payment gateway

Possible ways of fixing it

Try with another credit card

Simply go through the process again BUT CHOOSE PAYPAL as payment method. You do NOT have to have a Paypal account and you do NOT have to create one either. You can simply let Paypal process your credit card and that solves the problem.

Call your bank to hear if the "overseas charge" has triggered a security system and blocked the transaction

We don't offer trial memberships, but we do have a 30-day money-back guarantee. Please bear in mind that just one of our courses would cost you over 1000 USD if you were to buy it online elsewhere. So, right there, you are literally saving thousands and thousands of dollars.

Another reason we don't have trial memberships is that it attracts too many people who are just "looking around". Our community is very much about helping each other and connecting professionally so it would simply create too much "noise" to have people come and go.

Do I have to be online at an exact time to study?

No. You can set your own study schedule. There are no "live sessions" / "webinars" since our members are from all timezones around the world. We are a truly global community – with members in every single corner of the world.

Thus, once you are enrolled, you can take all the time you want to complete a given course. Each "classroom" for each course will neverclose, so you’ll have permanent access to your classmates and your course material (and your own answers).

Will I receive a Course Certificate?

Yes. Every time you complete a course you get an industry-recognized Course Certificate. There is no limit to how many Course Certificates you can earn during your membership. You will also receive a 3-step guide on how to include your Course Certificate on LinkedIn and in your Resume/CV.